


when i look back you are gone.

by liminalweirdo, slowlimbs



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (the non con elements come LATER and will be warned in the authors notes), Alternate Universe - College/University, Arm Wrestling, Canon-Typical Behavior, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Internalised Homophobia, Memory Loss, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Re-Meeting, Slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28794969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminalweirdo/pseuds/liminalweirdo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowlimbs/pseuds/slowlimbs
Summary: Eddie leaves for New York with his mother, and loses Richie piece by piece. Richie ends up in the same city, years later, college bound, and pulls a push door.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Original Male Character(s), Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	when i look back you are gone.

**Author's Note:**

> you guys i don't think we really know where this fic came from and it's _so long_. we'll keep putting warnings in our authors notes but there's nothing terrible, here. it's mainly just setting up for the rest of the fic!

He’s sixteen, and he has never waited more than two weeks for a call or a letter from Eddie. It was only supposed to be a few months — Eddie doing some kind of physiotherapy or something for his arm, in New York, and first Eddie promised he’d be back by summer, and then it was that he would be back for the beginning of 11th grade and Richie’s starting to think…) 

They’ve written religiously for almost a year. Eddie has written religiously. Richie can’t because Mrs. K would definitely intercept them (as Eddie has told him approximately one thousand and twelve times). What he can do, however, is call sometimes — from payphones usually. He practices his Voices so that he sounds less like Richie Tozier doing Voices and more like someone actually Else, and more than once he’s gotten through to Eds on the phone just by pretending to be someone Else. A friend from his new school calling about homework, usually, but that excuse only works so many times, and Richie curses the fact that kids don’t really talk on the phone to anyone but other kids. He’s getting pretty good at his Vacuum Salesperson Voice, but kids don’t buy vacuums, so that one’s sort of useless.

Usually though, Eddie calls him. When Mrs. K. goes out for groceries or to get her hair done or whatever. The conversations are rushed, trying to get it all out — what Bill’s doing, what Stanley and Mike are doing and (always, last) whatever Richie is doing, which is mostly just hanging around waiting for Eddie to call — he can’t explain it. The phone, man, it haunts his fucking dreams.

And then it stops. The very first week of summer vacation, it stops. And Richie waits for two weeks, and then two weeks more, and Bill starts coming around his house asking if he’s died.

Bill remembers that. Remembers that Richie had stood there, barefoot, legs too long for his pajamas and ankles painfully bony — staring down at his toes on the welcome mat and pushing his glasses up his face over and over again like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and saying “I dunno, I must be coming down with something. Hey, have you heard from Eds?”

The next time Bill comes, he brings Mike and Stan as backup, and they manage to drag Richie out of the house to go to the movies or biking or anything and Richie is uncharacteristically quiet and it freaks them _all_ out. They take turns calling Richie’s house, and then they take turns calling Eddie, but no one answers.

“M-m-maybe they’re on vacation. It’s s-sum-summer after all.”

“Where, the Hospital Cafeteria?” Stanley asks. “It’s Mrs. K. Nowhere is sterile enough.”

And no one can argue with that.

And Richie starts to think that maybe Eddie’s made new friends. Cool friends (although, he reasons, who’s cooler than Bill? Like, he should at least have called Bill…) or maybe Mrs. K’s keeping him hostage in her attic or something, or maybe he doesn’t want to talk to Richie anymore because of what they did, or maybe…

Maybe there’s someone else. Someone who didn’t say, first, “Throw it away.”

Like Richie had.

He’s sixteen when he gets up at five-thirty on a Sunday morning and climbs into his sister Peg’s car — the one she got for graduating — and drives it out to New York. He goes alone, with a backpack of clothes and money he’s been saving all summer, and six tapes which he leaves on the passenger seat. It’s a reckless, beautiful, teenage thing to do.

Back in Maine, his parents refrain from having a fit by acknowledging the fact that most of the missing kids went missing without their sister’s beat up, second-hand Volvo, and without leaving a note on the fridge that says “Not missing, don’t worry.”

The note itself is worrying enough.

And Richie pulls (shaky with nerves) into New York City, and he’s so freaked by the traffic and the highways that he forgets, for a moment, what he’s even doing here. His Talking Heads tape spins out into silence and he doesn’t notice. And finally he’s there and he downs the dregs of his very warm (and very flat) can of coke, grabs his bag and his tapes and double checks he’s locked the doors and turns to face the city and thinks.

_Why am I here, again?_

Why am I here?

He walks around, aimless and a little paranoid for a couple of hours, feeling dreamlike and surreal. He pays for fries and then thinks _What am I doing?_ and goes to find some New York Pizza and he pretends he’s Holden from Catcher in the Rye for a little while, thinking about how everyone else is so goddamn phony, as he swings one leg and eats his slice and watches people pass by and by and by.

But he’s the phony, he thinks. He thinks it with unsettling sincerity, and this strange, heavy gravitas.

_Why am I here?_

And in the end, he just gets back in the car and drives home. Windows down by the time he hits Vermont, wind night-cold and screaming in his ears because he’s so, so tired. He pulls into the driveway and steps into the house and it’s the first time in his entire life that his mom hits him, and then shakes him and then hugs him and cries and cries and Richie realizes he’s taller than her.

And he cries too, hard and gasping, and he isn’t even really sure why. He never quite shakes that feeling of reaching to grab onto something, only to miss the mark and close his fingers around air.

~

New York is almost always cold. Not necessarily in weather, but there’s a constant chill to Eddie's bones that he associates with being sick. He remembers at one point in his life feeling stronger than he does here. Remembers a bright flash of summer—

— like a photo booth —

And friends. But he can’t really remember their faces, anymore. Can only vaguely remember names. Lots of Bs jotted down in his address book. The address book which had eventually gone missing. And part of him is grateful for the enormous blank spots in his memory, although he’s never fully sure what he’s glad about forgetting and why.

Later on they will dub this amnesia the Derry Curse. But he doesn’t know that yet. The things he does know are that he is Eddie Kaspbrak, and he lives with his Mom, in New York. They didn’t always live in New York, but they live there now. And that he misses… something. Someone. Something that makes him stop dumbfounded on the street if he hears New Kids on the Block, if he hears Styx or Led Zeppelin, if he sees a head full of dark curls or a hideously patterned shirt—

— and then he cries after he jerks off and ignores the feeling of _dirty_ and _wrong_ in his chest.

And in all honesty maybe he… maybe he is, but Mama doesn’t know, so it’s not like it _counts_.

There’s something of a caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly about it, about having the two years of childhood in New York. Time and time again he brings up college to Ma. Testing the waters. And the thousandth time he asks he has this—

‘ _Dear R—_ ’, and, _who? Who?_

That fades immediately. Because the way Sonia Kaspbrak looks at him for the thousandth time is a win. He knows distantly that it’s a win. And she’s waving a hand in Eddie's direction, she’s suddenly not looking at him anymore, suddenly defeated and deflated and saying ‘if you want to expose yourself to all those germs and leave me then I can’t stop you; you’re a man now’.

Which Eddie doesn’t think is right or fair. He’s still small and slight, for one thing, so he doesn’t feel like a man and he certainly doesn’t _look_ like one. Summer still brings his boyhood freckles out and winter makes him pale with slapped cheeks.

There’s just no winning when you’re this ugly, he thinks.

~

Ma doesn’t help him pack, but she does hand him the little bank book for his savings account and her car keys and—

“Don’t come crying to me when it all goes wrong, Eddiebear.” There it is. The imitation of support followed by the revelation that she still even now thinks of him as Less Than.

“I’ll try not to, Ma.” He kisses her cheek anyway and accepts the deep hug into folds and thinks— _I never want to touch anything soft again_. And then he’s in the car and starting it and turning off the radio because for whatever reason music hurts too much.

~

College is good. College is so good and after two months he changes his major from engineering to art, fine art, literary, creative, everything Mama would hate. So he doesn’t tell her. And he doesn’t tell her about Felix. Felix who is…

… well, he’s lovely. He is. He’s decidedly very nice and has those curls that used to stop him dead in his tracks on the street. And they have very nice sex and go on very nice dates and Eddie is so fucking bored he wants to throw himself and all his watercolours and poetry books into into the electrical line in the subway.

~

Richie pretends for about four months and two _very_ narrowly failed exams that he will be able to get through this music program, and that he will be able to somehow afford an instrument and learn to play it in time for second year when he will be required to do so. He gets a job at a record store after literally hitting every single record store he could find in the phonebook and just going in to each of them on his free periods and his weekends until someone finally breaks down and asks him if he can work nights ’til 11 (yes) and weekends (yes), and holidays (yes), and then he has a job, and something about the records and the music makes him feel like… better, maybe, about coming here to do something that clearly isn’t for him, so he shows up four nights a week and he changes his major to film production and that sits a little better.

Unfortunately he’s too late to pick any of the good classes for second semester, so he ends up in a few random things like Foundations in American Literature and Poetry something and also, unfortunately, Philosophy, which makes him want to literally rip his eyeballs out of his head.

And through it all he forgets, fragment by fragment, piece by piece, about Bill and Stanley, and Mike, and Eddie and Bev who never call, and Ben who promised to visit over Spring Break and…

Just…

Peg calls him for Thanksgiving and asks how he’s doing and if he needs anything and she calls him Richie which is so weird, because no one calls him that here in New York. It feels weird, half-forgetting your own name. Or the name that someone, somewhere, called you.

It’s familiar, coming from her over the phone, and he tells himself that the reason he felt like crying was because he hadn’t realized, really that he’d missed home at all. He’s just been, he tells himself, so busy, and he listens to his classmates talk about what their moms are making for Thanksgiving dinner and about their friends back home and Richie realizes that he has no earthly idea what the Toziers normally do for Thanksgiving, but it’s ham, isn’t it? Isn’t it always ham? Or is it turkey… or just plain old KFC?

He’s late to the very first class of second semester which never bodes well, he thinks, and he’s annoyed that now he’s going to have to make up for it or something because he believes that professors Remember and they Know Who Gives A Shit, and Richie, at least, wants to pretend to Give A Shit about poetry because it’s just an elective but it might at least help him make up for his shit marks last semester, and how hard can it be, really?

Everyone, because it’s the first day, has crowded into the back and Richie pulls the push door and makes a racket, and then finally manages to figure out a door — his hangover makes the classroom seem very bright, and the heat contrasting with the cold outside makes his glasses fog up immediately. Jesus it’s 8:30 in the morning and the sun sure is rising right there in those tall windows along the far wall. He squints kind of helplessly through sunspots and the fog to find an empty desk, pretty aware of the silence that’s fallen.

“Are you on the attendance?”

“Uh, Tozier?”

“Richard?”

“Rich.”

“Okay, great… you can sit.”

He thinks _I’m trying_ and the first spot he sees that’s empty is near the front (fuck), between the wall and some guy, and so he sits there and tries not to make any more noise which means he isn’t about to open his bag and get his notebook or anything so he doesn’t. He just very gently sets his bag down on the floor and drags his hands helplessly through his hair and takes his glasses off to wipe the fog off on his shirt and wishes he’d thought to take a fucking Tylenol or something.

And from Eddie’s perspective, it quickly becomes routine for this Richard - Rich - Tozier. He’s always late, always looks hungover, always rumpled, never carrying water or food or taking painkillers, sitting with his head down and only really pretending to work.

Eddie feels a rush of affection that is new and infuriating and familiar all at once.

If Felix notices his distraction, he doesn’t say anything. Eddie isn’t sure how to tell him _hey you’re nice and all but you also bore me to tears and there’s this dude in my poetry elective who makes me feel like I’m riding my bike with no stabilisers for the first time_. Mainly because he doesn’t remember ever doing that. What he does instead is kiss his forehead instead of his lips, pointedly not making eye contact with the man with the thin limbs in his rumpled bed who is almost— but not—.

He doesn’t understand what it is he’s looking for. But he packs an extra bottle of water, bottle of Advil, and dithers over snacks for five minutes before just grabbing something from every food group and stuffing it all into a paper grocery bag.

It doesn’t mean shit. It just means that Richard - Rich - is woefully unprepared for what college actually is. He drops the bag on the desk adjacent to him and waits for that fucking — who the fuck after three weeks of lessons still pulls a push door?

 _Richie_ pulls the push door and actually whispers “Bullshit door,” and then he’s sloping through the desks to the one near the wall — the one he has taken since class began — and sits down.

He’s also late _again_ which he knows is going to pull his mark down, but seriously it’s 8:30 and it’s Monday, and he knows its his fault, but there were no other classes!

And there’s shit on his desk and he actually pulls up short, wondering if someone else has stolen it, and then realizes that it’s probably his classmate’s stuff, and he seems nice and not frightening, and he’s like five feet fall, so Richie isn’t afraid to nudge it gently as he sits down, sort of more towards his side. He says “Sorry,” and catches brown eyes for a moment that remind him off — god, something… deer or something — and quickly looks away.

“You seem like you need it more than me.” Eddie says, not fully looking up from where he’s taking notes, using his elbow to sweep it back towards him.

And there’s that familiarity again. Something in the way the guy holds himself, or sits, or maybe something about the slouched line of his shoulders, or the way he pushes his glasses up and visibly has to force refocusing of his pupils, or—.

There’s no real point dwelling on it. Eddie thinks he probably just has A Type. And he thinks momentarily about Felix curled up in his bed this morning and like a fantasy sees him with Rich’s face and has to shake his head to clear _that_ away. Eddie can accept being small, he can accept being slight, he can accept being _queerfagfairyhomo_ — gay, but he won’t accept a wandering eye. He won’t do that.

Felix is too… well. He’s very nice.

For a moment he feels like he’s about to be pranked, but he’s not a coward, either, and he’s curious, so he reaches for the bag and pulls it towards himself and something inside falls over. Water. He has to snatch the bag from toppling over the side of the desk and then it’s Advil and — _snacks_.

“Oh my god,” he says, all over delight, and then, with sudden, painful, dawning realization: “Is it that obvious?” He smells the inside of his jacket to see if it smells like booze, but it just smells like cigarette smoke and leather.

They’re talking quiet, but the room is big enough that the teacher keeps lecturing and doesn’t notice their conversation. The girl behind them is sleeping with her head in her arms, so Richie assumes she doesn’t care.

“The inside of that jacket might smell like fucking lavender but I promise you the outside smells like tequila.” Eddie shoots him a smile, moves his notebook so he can see what he’s missed, “it’s less to do with the smell, anyway. Who the fuck makes the same mistake with the same door three weeks in a row?” And god, he never speaks to people like this. Why is he speaking like this? Why to this dude? Sure he _thinks_ like this all the time but out loud? Nope. No. Never. “I’m Eddie, by the way. You can call me the Snack Master.”

“Call ya Angel, sweetheart,” he says, in a Voice, already cracking into the painkillers. It’s a New York voice, and he realizes suddenly, that this guy — Eddie, also had kind of a New York voice, a hint of it — and he might think Richie’s making fun of him, after he just brought him _snacks_. “Rich—” he cuts off sharply, hard ‘ch’ because he almost kept going — Richie. Weird. He pops two to cover that awkwardness, and then drinks about half the bottle of water in one go and then says, “Also, fuck off, asshole, every other door on this campus is a fucking ‘pull’.”

His heart starts pounding like _That was too much_ . The same kind of Too Much as when he gets drunk and does Voices and people he was chatting with start drifting away from him across the room. Eddies extremities go kind of numb, but he’s grinning now, only half listening to the lecturer because _fuck_ that's funny. And it’s not _nice_. And it makes something in him loosen and fall away like a rockslide.

“Laugh it up, shit for brains, next week when you come in here with your nose leaking cranial fluid and trying to open the door the wrong way guess who _won’t_ have brought you water and snacks.” 

And he offers his hand, over the crook of his elbow.

“Good to meet you Rich.” Putting emphasis on the same place he did, just to make fun.

“Shut up,” he laughs, taking his hand and — ouch — but he ignores it. Sometimes the tendons or something in his hands act up, stinging across his palms in a white-hot flash. Probably another reason he shouldn't play an instrument. “Maybe I just won’t show up next week,” he says, like that’s any kind of retort. _Who fucking cares?_ and he thinks _How do I repay him?_ and he thinks _His eyes are so nice._

Richie drops his own gaze to the notes Eddie ( _Eddie_ he repeats to himself) has shifted over, and picks up his pen like he’s actually going to do something with his own notes, which he isn’t. He glances at him again, more than once in the span of about five seconds. And if Eddie winces in the same beat, at the slide of their palms, neither of them say anything. He himself thinks that there’s probably issues in his hands to do with breaking his arm and— it had been so bad Ma had to move them all the way to New York and—.

“Well fuck you in that case.” He’s reaching across him like making friends is easy all the time, snagging back the packet of fruit snacks and pulling them to his desk. Glances down to watch for when Rich has caught up, then takes the notes back too.

And it’s not flirting. It’s not. It’s just _good chucks getting off a good one cute cute cute!_ and he blinks hard enough to see stars because he has _no idea_ where that came from.

Eddie’s handwriting, Richie notes, is _not_ as neat as the rest of him and that gives him a weird kind of satisfaction, because his words aren’t neat and clean either, they’re sharp and a little wicked. Richie bites his lip so he doesn’t start grinning down at his notes like an idiot. 

When the lecture ends, he’s already packing up, swinging his notebook closed and standing, shouldering his bag. He feels _so_ much better than he normally would, water and Advil and sugar for breakfast will do that to a hangover, and he thinks…

“Where are you off to, now,” because he should do _something_ to thank him, he just isn’t sure what. His mouth opens again and out tumbles “Eddie Spaghetti?”

“Brunch date.” Eddie—. Spaghetti? It cools something wild at the top of his spine, the base of his neck, tingling up over his scalp.

 _Eddie Spaghetti Eddie my love cute cute cute apple-solutely_. And—

“Nothing I couldn’t heartlessly abandon, why?” _Sorry Felix_ , he thinks vaguely, distantly, of the poached eggs (very nice) that Felix makes him very Monday before track and the (very nice) Gatorade he always puts in the fridge and the (very nice) pasta dinner he’ll go home to tonight.

And very nice is becoming a synonym for boring, he thinks, packing his things up neatly and throwing the unopened fruit snacks to him.

Richie thinks _I know nothing about this person_ and he thinks _Tell him to go on his brunch date_ and he thinks _nothing I couldn’t heartlessly abandon_. 

He says “Buy you breakfast,” which is, decidedly, poor man’s brunch, and why the hell would anyone… and what even would they talk about anyway? He slips past him to the aisle, backing up, shrugging his shoulders. Southern Belle: “Otherwise I will just have to languish over how on god’s green earth I’m going to repay you for your ex-tuh-RAV-a-gant kindness, good sir.”

And Eddie watches him catch the fruit snacks, watches that long line of skinny arm fly out like it’s effortless. Like Eddies been throwing him things his whole life. The voice makes him laugh, eyes crinkling up and teeth showing, and he slings his bag over his shoulder and nods.

“Sure. And water and jerky is not extravagant. If I’d gone out of my way, maybe, but you’re just getting the cast offs from my snack cupboard, dude.”

Then, following him out like he doesn’t have a choice (and Eddie thinks, does he have a choice? Thinks of rotten floorboards and banishes the image from his mind);

“Let me just stop at the desk and cancel, ‘Kay?”

“You don’t really have to,” he says as they walk down the hall together towards the exit, and Richie gets this flash of _This super Jewy test — they slice the tip of his dick off elementary school hallways_. Richie stops dead and turns back, because they’re waiting for someone aren’t they? Someone else is meeting them here…

And then Eddie almost crashes into him and he reaches out fast to steady him.

And Richie remembers he doesn’t know anyone else who takes classes in this building. He blinks fast. “Sorry— I thought I forgot something,” he lies and his hand is on Eddie’s shoulder.

“How else are you going to pay me back?” He raises an eyebrow at him, collides with him, and then turns back himself. Because he’d felt it too. That—,

( _I hate you, have they got the right stuff to fix you up, beep beep beep beep, I don’t think anyone’s worried about spiders, it’s not real it’s not real it’s not real, do you want one from me too mrs. k?_ ) 

There should have been at least three of them going through that door. But no. And then there’s a warm hand on his shoulder and he’s thinking about Felix again, firmly, because that hand is a Very Different kind of Very Nice and—.

The thing is, Rich hasn’t given any indication that he’s anything but perfectly straight, so maybe just a tiny bit of fantasising wouldn’t do any harm. And in a funny little way Eddie is aware that he and Felix won’t make it to the new year. They just won’t.

“Believe me, I can live without one Monday brunch with my boyfriend.” Bravery, because this will decide where this friendship goes. Eddie thinks sometimes that the nineties aren’t as progressive as they pretend to be.

Richie blinks, refocuses. He drops his hand, but not quickly, not in disgust. Just takes it away, and his eyes flash quickly over his face and over his chest, his legs, taking in what he’s wearing, like _oh_ , because he _hadn’t_ been thinking — well, okay, maybe he _had_ a little, but he thought he was just stereotyping, and there’s lots of guys in New York that dress nice and aren’t— 

And there’s something in his eyes, the way he’s looking up at Richie now that says that this is a test and he genuinely doesn’t care. He doesn’t, but he’s a little bit caught because suddenly he’s _so_ curious, more than he should be.

Night club, first week in New York, hands on his face _chest_ ass, hand between his legs through his jeans and _oh, fuck,_ **_oh_ ** _fuck,_ but it had been a stranger and he’d been so drunk he’d practically been using the guy to stay upright and it wasn’t what he’d wanted and he’d…

The lights had come on at 3 a.m. for closing time and the guy had looked away from him pointedly while Richie staggered backwards into someone else, and then a wall and — gone home and crashed in bed, and then showered in water so hot it scalded his skin before he puked, but it wasn’t because he was hungover it was because he’d wanted it and — not even that he’d wanted it, it was that he hadn’t wanted it like that. Not like that.

“But can he live without one Monday brunch with you?” Richie says, and smiles at him, then nods towards the door like _let’s go._

“I am one hundred percent sure he will be over the moon, not having to listen to me talking about the dickhead who sits next to me smelling like a bar ashtray.” Eddie's eyes wrinkle around the edges again and he grins at him. Starts walking towards the doors, towards the sunlight, adjusting his bag as he turns his head to call over his shoulder:

“You coming, Richie?”

Richie.

The hair on his - _Richie’s_ \- arms stands up, like when he hears a really good song. 

They stop at the desk, and then end up a block and a half away at a campus cafe that’s actually pretty decent, and has free coffee refills. The food’s shown up but they haven’t stopped laughing for long enough to really eat any of it and that’s when Richie’s bold enough to finally pick up a forkful of hashbrowns and say “You talk to your boyfriend about me?” then shovels them into his mouth to further stop himself from saying something dumb.

“Constantly.” Eddie raises an eyebrow at him, speaking around a mouthful of egg whites. Thinks about how for years he thought he was allergic to eggs and how that was bullshit.

Gazebos.

“You’re my one true obsession, obviously, I have nothing else going on in my life. It’s just you and Fee.” Who had been, as expected, Very Nice about it all when he’d spoken to him on the phone. A little disappointed, a little concerned (“but baby you have track in three hours…” and Eddie thinks he could live very happily without hearing him call him baby ever again, which is unfair) but all around, nice.

“So what the fuck do you do all weekend that makes you smell like a brewery?”

1950s film Noir: “If I told ya that,” Richie says, pointing a very serious forkful of sausage at him “I’d have ta kill ya.” And, voice back to normal. “So Fee’s your boyfriend?” as if reading his mind “That’s nice.”

_Get the fuck outta here, faggot._

“It’s very nice.” And Eddies looking at him, feeling the downturn of his mouth and the tiredness - the ennui - around his eyes. The voice makes him laugh again, shaking his head. “His name is Felix. We’ve only been seeing each other since, like, June, so.” Shrugs and sips his coffee, leaning back in his chair and crosses one ankle over his knee.

He wants to say ‘it’s not serious’, wants to say ‘it’s not like I _love_ him’ wants to say _he’s so boring I’ve thought about smothering him to death with my ass just to see what would happen_ and says none of those things.

“What about you? No girlfriend waiting at your dorm to be regaled with tales of your knight with shining Advil?”

Richie smiles at him so hard and so fond he has to hide it behind his fork hand. His heart is fucking _racing_ , he shouldn’t have had so much coffee. He lets his eyes slide away. 

“I can’t be trusted around other people for long before I talk so much they want to blow their brains out, so _I_ have an apartment, actually,” he says. And his brain pipes up _come up and see it sometime_.

To his horror, his mouth says it, too, and Eddie mock-gasps, pressing his hand to his chest and smiling smiling smiling and oh shit this is so much more fun than he’s had in so _long_. Longer than he remembers.

“And let you get me _alone_ , Mr. Tozier? How inappropriate.” And then he has to soften it by laughing softly against the rim of his coffee cup. “Maybe, sometime, yeah. We’ll compare schedules next Monday and work something out, if that works?”

It takes Richie a minute of mental scrambling to figure out where Eddie got his last name, but then he remembers, the class registry.

He thinks: _he remembered_. But he’s laughing all the same at Eddie’s antics. He can’t stop fucking grinning, until he does.

“I really might drop the class though,” he admits. “Work’s getting crazy and my GPA is probably already shit, so I figure I can just give up a free period next year… Give you my number.”

“What do you do for work?” And then Eddie’s digging in his bag for a pen. “I do weekends at the Gagosian. Tour guiding and shit. Ah—.” Finds a pen, a nice felt tip, and hands it to him, then offers him his palm for his number.

Thinks, vaguely, that a napkin would be better.

And Richie gets this chill, not entirely unpleasant, and he reaches across the table and takes Eddie’s hand, holding it still as he writes out the numbers. He’s just looping the first 8 when he says “P.S. How big’s your boyfriend? ‘Cause I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He’s quoting something, not sure what. Fingers spreading against the back of Eddie’s hand, thumb finding its way to the inside of Eddie’s wrist as he draws out the 4, the 2.

And Eddie says;

“Five inches hard.” Without thinking about it, eyes on the way Richies fingers fucking envelope his own and he’s not going to shiver. He’s just not. Because that would be so embarrassing and Richie hasn’t said one way or the other where he prefers to hang his hat.

Then, examining him a little;

“Probably a bit shorter than you. Broader, but your shoulders are wider.”

He laughs too loud. A few studying people turn to scowl at him and Richie’s fucked up the 3 so he has to re-trace it. “That’s a three,” he tells him. “Don’t let him beat me up, I’m running on instant ramen, tequila and a pack a day.” He finishes his number, and looks up, eyes on his. “And I work at that record place surrounded by like ten Chinese restaurants in Soho. Turnturtles. Say that ten times fast. Most nights til eleven. Start at five o’clock businessmen and finish at twenty past addicts.”

“I know Soho.” Eddie grins at him, takes the pen and corrects the 3 with a swoop of his own. Gets a refill of coffee from the waitress when she passes. 

“I don’t think Fee is capable of beating anyone up. I don’t think he could beat _me_ up and i'm probably 150lb soaking wet.” Like he doesn’t know _exactly_ how much he weighs. “I fight too dirty for anyone to catch me though. I’m all elbows.”

“Yeah, you look scrappy,” Richie tells him, leaning back in his chair. He pushes his hands into the pockets of the jacket he’s still wearing, eyes on Eddie, sizing him up. “You probably kick the shit out of guys twice your size and then you’re—” he pretends to take a hit, two hits, off an aspirator, pretend-puts it back into his pocket and dusts off his hands and looks around like there’s a group of dudes standing around them. Affecting Eddie’s voice, his slight New York accent -- or maybe it’s more of an attitude: “Who’s next?”

“Oh fuck you dude.” He laughs along with him, digs in his pocket for his inhaler and throws it across the table at him. “I do _not_ sound like that you fuckin’ prick.” But he does. He knows he does. He definitely does. Then he thinks about the first week he’d been here, and the bar brawl he’d ended up in and shrugs, a little smug.

“The last guy I had a fight with gave me a black eye so I gave him a bloody nose.”

Richie picks it - the aspirator - up and turns it over in his hands. Reads _Kaspbrak_ on the prescription label. _Use as needed_.

He actually can picture Eddie Kaspbrak kicking the shit out of someone and he puts his chin in one hand, flutters his eyelashes behind his glasses. “I love a man who’s got brawn instead of brains,” he Voices, all breathless. He fans himself with his aspirator fan, pretends to air out the neck of his blouse, which really just ends up being the too-big button down shirt he’s wearing beneath the jacket.

“Man, shut up.” But the smile on Eddie's face flashes fond before he catches himself and reminds himself - Felix. Reminds himself - he doesn’t know if Richie is gay or straight or somewhere in between or nowhere.

Ignores (tries to, but now it’s burned into his head forever and he thinks ‘sorry Felix’ again) the flash of collarbone and clavicle and pale chest he sees.

“I’m decidedly not brawny. There’s literally no muscle here.” He leans across the table to offer his arm, his bicep. “Feel. It’s like kneading very stringy dough.”

Richie thinks: _Christ this is…_ he shouldn’t, because he keeps getting these hot little twists in his gut. Uncrosses and recrosses his legs as he leans across the table to touch him anyway, fingers sliding over his upper arm. He squeezes. “Quite right, my boy,” he says. It’s another Voice, God, there is something wrong with him.

 _B-Best p-p-part of you r-ran down your fuh-fuh-hather’s l-l-leg_.

“No muscle on this one, none at all.” He sounds like a horse hawker. He pulls back, elbow on the table, hand offered. “Think you could best me?” he asks. “Remember, tequila and instant noodles.”

“No, I don’t.” But Eddie slots their hands together anyway, feels the pit of his stomach drop out when Richies fingers curl around the broad of his hand again and—.

Felix. Remember Felix. Your boyfriend who is very nice and is probably sitting at home wondering why he didn’t get invited to breakfast and just wants to—.

Just wants to take care of you. Just wants to make sure you’re okay. Just wants to subtly micromanage every aspect of your life that he can until college is over and you both have very nice jobs and can get a very nice house and keep having very nice, very missionary sex until you both die very nice deaths.

And fuck that. Because he’s eighteen and he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want that dry sepia future where he can’t even bicker for fun because his boyfriends eyes get all dewy and hurt and—.

Eddie grips Richie's hand just a touch tighter.

“You’re stronger than you think,” Richie tells him, and presses, but not as hard as he can — gives him a little warning first. Eddie’s arm tightens and he is, actually. Stronger than he looks. Richie gives a quick little laugh, looks up at him, eyes wicked, grinning, dark.

Eddie thinks and feels a million different things, roughly, in the space of three seconds. He sees the tendons in Richies arm pop and go tense and thinks—

 _Oh no_.

And then feels the push of his palm against his own and thinks—

 _Fuck, help_.

And then Richie laughs and looks up at him and Eddie has milliseconds to arrange his face into something that _isn’t_ vague flustered panic and meets his eyes and thinks—

_How much trouble would I feasibly be in if I skipped training today?_

Because Felix, who the fuck is Felix, suddenly? When Richie’s palm is warm and dry against his own? And then he has to press back, has to try, because maybe if he wins then the loud static in his head will go quiet. And he thinks, a little hysterically, _I swear_.

Richie wins. He wins too easily and their cups rattle and he laughs, reaches for his hand, pulls at his fingers to make sure the phone number is still there.

 _—town is full of little fairies._ Quickly, he lets go.

“I win. Should’ve bet something.”

“I’ll pay.” The smile is just a little shaky on Eddie’s face, because his brain is running laps and screaming and he can feel the catch of an impending panic attack and oh fuck maybe track isn’t happening today regardless. He wants to go home and write Richies number down in his address book and have a shower and—

Not think about the power in his arm. Not think about how easily he’d been _over_ powered.

Not think about how Richie doesn’t treat him like he’s delicate because he isn’t.

And then it’s okay because Richie draws back again, drinks the rest of his coffee, then pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and waves it a little. “Then, you ready?” he asks, “I have another class in… ten minutes ago,” he says, checking his watch. “Shit.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Eddie throws twenty dollars down on the table and stands, holding his arms out towards the doors. “After you, Jesus, go.”

And he does, so Eddie does, and Felix is thankfully not there when he gets home. The spare key has been put through the door, which he appreciates, and he doesn’t even need to fake the wheeze in his breath when he rings and takes himself off the track training for the day.

The shower is cleansing and hot, so hot, burning his back, and he towels himself as roughly as he can, standing in front of the mirror and watching his skin go pink and not acknowledging the fact that he’s hard.

Because that’s not fair. It’s not fair on Richie and it’s not fair on Felix and when he’d penned the new number into his book half an hour earlier he hadn’t even thought about calling him.

Monday’s, thankfully, are clear outside of Poetry and track, and he thinks—. He wonders—. If he went down to Turnturtles tonight, would Richie be there?

**Author's Note:**

> Join us on tumblr!  
> [ **liminalweirdo**](https://liminalweirdo.tumblr.com/) and [**slowlimbs**](https://slowlimbs.tumblr.com/)


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